Puppy fat of the land

Television, not treats, is to blame for the increasing numbers of obese children, says Sarah Lonsdale

WHEN the British Medical Journal claimed, earlier this month, that our children are getting fatter, reaction was swift. Cut out the burgers, chips and fizzy drinks and they will once more look like those knobbly-kneed waifs of the 1950s - all cheekbones and short back and sides.

Blaming TV: a toddler entranced by Teletubbies

But, although nearly 10 per cent of British boys and 15 per cent of girls aged between four and 11 are now classed as officially overweight, according to the BMJ, our children are consuming less fat and fewer calories than their parents and grandparents did.

An analysis of the diets of four-year-olds in 1950 was published last year in the journal, Public Health Nutrition. It found that, although food rationing was still in place in 1950, children wolfed down fatty milk puddings (71g a day, compared to the 9g on average that modern children consume daily); spreading fats (20g a day, compared to 7g) and bread (120g a day, compared to a paltry 48g).

All those suet puddings and bowls of custard were rather naughty, you see. And, although modern children knock back far more in the way of soft drinks (446g a day, compared to 13g in the 1950s), 50 years ago, children drank sugary tea by the gallon.

The study's authors concluded that, in 1950, children took in, on average, 80 calories a day more than today's children. Their diets were made up of 40 per cent fat, compared to 35 per cent today. What is going on?

"The reason today's children are more overweight is more to do with calorie expenditure than calorie intake," says Sue Chinn, of the department of public health sciences at Kings College, London, and author of the BMJ report.

She says that the reason why our children are becoming fat is obvious: in the 1950s and 1960s, virtually all primary-school-age children walked to school. Today they are driven. In those days, too, television was the luxury of a middle-class minority. Instead of spending their afternoons watching The Tweenies and Pokemon, children amused themselves with skipping ropes and bicycles. It has also been suggested that, thanks to modern heating systems, today's children spend far less energy keeping warm than they did 50 years ago.

"Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, children remained relatively skinny," says Pauline Emmett, a nutritionist at Bristol University, who is working on a study of obesity and social class among seven-year-olds.

"The big leap in the numbers of overweight children has happened since the mid-1980s. This discounts the genetic argument. Although, it is true to say that children with fat parents are more likely to be fat themselves. However, that is more to do with the family's way of life than genetics."

Middle-class children, whose mothers are more likely to breastfeed (breastfed babies are far less likely to become overweight children than bottle-fed ones) and whose parents are better informed on health matters, have a lesser chance of becoming overweight than children in lower social classes.

"Middle-class parents can also afford to send their daughters to dancing classes," says Emmett.

The health implications of being fat as a child are enormous: about half of all overweight children will become overweight adults, with the attendant problems of heart disease, the risk of diabetes, osteoporosis and an increased risk of getting cancer.

Fitness campaigners blame the fact that less and less school time is devoted to physical exercise; many school playing fields were sold off in the 1980s and 1990s. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to guarantee two hours of PE per week for every school child in the country, who requests it. The trouble is that children with obesity problems are unlikely to demand extra physical exercise.

Emmett says that what we should be encouraging is not so much formal exercise classes, but making physical activity part of everyday life. Various attempts in Britain and America, where one in five children are overweight, have been made to persuade children to be less slothful.

The American Heart Association recently undertook a project to encourage children to watch several hours less television a week. They discovered that, after only a few weeks, the children's body mass index (a measurement of being overweight) fell significantly.

In Britain, some schools have established the "walking school bus", where parents and teachers take it in turns to walk dozens of children to school in old-fashioned crocodile style, picking up children as they go. Work is even under way to produce the dynamo television, a bicycle-style contraption, linked to a television, which you must pedal hard to get your fix of cartoons.

"It is far better to concentrate on taking more exercise than to talk to children about dieting," says Chinn. "Dieting in children can be dangerous and can lead to childhood anorexia, which is increasing, hand in hand, with childhood obesity."

And, indeed, when one hears of girls as young as five talking about going on diets, it is easy to see why we need to avoid the dangers of making children anxious about their weight. "The only area where food intake could be curbed is 'grazing'. Instead of sitting down to three square meals, children eat unhealthy snacks throughout the day," says Emmett. So get them to sit down in front of a two-course meal of meat and vegetables followed by spotted dick and custard - and then padlock the fridge.

Tips for tubby tykes

Walk rather than drive them to school.

Cut your children's television time by 20 minutes to half an hour each day.

If your children are over five, give them semi-skimmed milk. (Do not serve it to under-fives as it has fewer vitamins than full-fat milk.)

Instead of chipping potatoes, boil or mash them.

Fish fingers, sausages and chicken nuggets can all be baked rather than fried.

Swap some sweets and chocolate for dried fruit.

Take them to the local playground.

On wet, wintry afternoons, dance with them to your old Abba or Beatles records.

Go out for bike rides in the sun.

Ask your parents or grandparents what they used to do to amuse themselves.